Now, Doctor Who
After Capaldi, what should this show’s next incarnation be like?
Four years have gone quickly. It doesn’t feel like long ago Matt Smith said he was leaving Doctor Who; now it’s Peter Capaldi’s turn. Since the revival, no exit has felt this premature—Tennant and Smith’s Doctors had run their course, and Christopher Eccleston’s year began with the announcement he’d regenerate. Capaldi has one more series, but was the first of all the new Doctors to seem like he could go and go: it still feels like we’ve only scratched the surface of what he’s capable of, and I’d have been happy for him to have a Tom Baker length run.
Series eleven, due next year, will be Chris Chibnall’s first as showrunner. There’s talk that he’ll bring a US-style writers’ room approach, and despite feeling like a waste, Capaldi’s departure was expected; meanwhile, his new companion Pearl Mackie hasn’t announced whether she’ll stay. With a new cast and crew, Doctor Who itself is expected to regenerate. In which case: what should the new show be like? Seemingly unlike the majority, I feel optimistic about Chibnall, and in terms of both writing and casting, I have thoughts about where I’d like to see the series go.
Less Sherlock, More Broadchurch
Whatever you think of Steven Moffat, his style—intricacy, romance and fairy tales—isn’t like anyone else’s. I’m looking forward to a different spin on Who from the writer behind Broadchurch. I can see Chibnall’s show having a Russell-T-Davies realism, perhaps with longer arcs and fewer quips. Of the three modern showrunners, he feels closest to Terry Nation—Genesis of the Daleks is much more like Broadchurch than Sherlock or Queer as Folk—and I’d like to see some of Who’s old grit and earnestness reinstated. I’d like the characters to have a similar straightforwardness.
Make Doctor Who New Again
Capaldi was an intently classic Doctor, a throwback to William Hartnell and his ilk, and his character’s arc has been about the past. Twelve was the Doctor who went back to being a dunderhead with a box, returned home and made peace with his regrets, and recent stories have displayed an unapologetic nostalgia. I’ve liked that immensely, but now it’s time to swing back toward modernism: I want series eleven to have the same freshness and inventiveness as series one had thirteen years before. Moffat gave Who some of its classic aspects back; now I want to see it reinvented again.
Ban White Men
I’m serious: that’s my rule for casting the next Doctor. There are plenty of actors in that group who could make excellent Doctors, just as there have always been plenty outside it. For now they can afford to wait—just as everyone else has waited for fifty-five years. My headcanon is that Matt Smith’s new regeneration cycle was a software update with more options, and nothing would fit better with a fresh direction on the show than a Doctor who looked different from all of the others. Fourteen white men in fifty-five years is a problem: don’t make it fifteen.
Who Would I Cast?
I can think of a food good names. (Yesterday I started a Twitter thread asking for more.) Hayley Atwell has already thrown hers into the hat, and she’d have the same dashing flair as Pertwee and Tennant; I can see Letitia Wright working with Chibnall, and her stillness reminds me John Hurt’s. Naveen Andrews of Lost and Sense8 has a wonderful Doctor in him, romantic and cerebral in the vein of Paul McGann’s; Alexander Siddig has sci-fi cred and a long CV in television. Once you eliminate the usual names, the whole question becomes more interesting.
